Choices
by AlternateReality12
Summary: It's been five years since the Anglar Blitz, and the Lylat System has entered a period of interstellar exploration. Former members of the Star Fox and Star Wolf teams have been quite prosperous since they disbanded. This isn't the case for Wolf O'Donnell, however, who's come to question his life choices. He'll soon find that he can, in fact, choose happiness. Wolf/Fox, M (language)


The last swig of bourbon in his glass warmed his throat on its way down. He clenched his teeth—despite its warming effect, it was still pungent. He had no idea what brand it was, but past experience told him that it was most likely a discount whiskey from a Venomian distillery. He slowly surveyed the bar again. It was small, dark, musty, and somber. A garden variety of individuals sat at the worn tables—Cornerian soldiers, independent mercenaries, sketchy types, and even a couple of Sharpclaw from Sauria. They like he were seeking relief from the harsh Titanian summer heat—not that the unconditioned bar provided much. However, it did serve as a shield from the sun which was refreshing. He did his best to tune out the blaring music from the jukebox in the background and went to lay his head on the bar before the bartender startled him.

"You want another, O'Donnell?" the elderly crocodile asked.

The grey wolf rested his elbow on the bar and leaned forward to rub his head, "Ah, nah, I should prolly get going. Sun'll be down soon and I need sleep."

The croc nodded, "Close your tab then?"

"Yeah."

"Alright, gimme a minute," he went to tend a Sharpclaw that sat down at the other side of the bar.

Wolf sat up now and stretched. He could feel the fuzziness of slight drunkenness in his head and decided to give himself a few moments to recover before he'd leave. He leaned on the bar with his other arm, which soon reminded him along with a sharp grit of his teeth that it was still sore from the injury he got at work earlier that day. He'd slipped and fallen on a patch of oil after he'd finished repairing the G-Diffuser on a Cornerian arwing, and he was pretty sure he'd at least sprained his forearm. The pain wasn't as bad now as it had been initially, but it was still quite significant. The whiskey had helped slightly, but he wasn't drunk enough for the pain to completely leave his mind. The croc returned now with his credit card and receipt, and had apparently seen Wolf grit his teeth.

"You alright, O'Donnell?"

Wolf winced when he moved his injured arm to sign the receipt, and he shrugged, "Eh, I fell on a spot of oil in the hangar today like a dumbass, Rex. Think I sprained my arm or something. Figured a few glasses of whiskey would help."

Rex rested a fist on his hip and leaned against the bar, "Well, you go see the medics about it?"

Wolf looked at him and smirked, "Psh, you think my shitty insurance would cover that? I'll only go if I'm dyin'."

"Don't be stupid, O'Donnell."

"I call it being practical."

The croc shook his head, "Honestly, dunno why you wanna stay on this crummy planet and work at that repair hangar. You used to pilot ships throughout the Lylat, for god's sake."

Wolf rolled his eyes and sighed, "Shit, Rex, you tell me this same thing almost every week and it's always the same answer. I ain't teaching flight at the Cornerian academy. General Hare would never go for it."

"They could use your piloting skills, though! People talk, O'Donnell. I know how good you are. Besides, you got pardoned by President Pepper for your help during the aparoid and Anglar shit. Dunno what reason Peppy would have to hold a grudge."

"Was. How good I was. And ha, he just plain doesn't like me, Rex. He'd find some reason."

"When's the last time you flew? You know, other than the test flights you take on those ships you fix."

Wolf furrowed his brow, "Ha, you mean really flew? Probably when I still had the wolfen. Shit, that was, what, five years ago now?"

"Should've never sold that thing, O'Donnell."

"Was either that or go broke."

The croc sighed and collected Wolf's signed receipt, "Well, you shouldn't be wasting your life here on Titania. Place is a fuckin' wasteland and always will be, no matter how much they build."

Wolf stood up and waved as he walked toward the exit, "Night Rex. See ya tomorrow."

The sun was setting when he stepped outside, and a blast of hot air hit his fur. _Fuckin' sun,_ he thought. He looked around the base and saw the night shift mechanics heading into the repair hangar a few blocks away, but otherwise the place seemed rather deserted. It was typical at this hour, though—the night shift soldiers had gone to their posts, and everyone else was in their dorms or apartments escaping the heat. An evening stroll was not a typical activity on Titania, and those foolish enough to take one learned their lessons immediately upon waking up with painful sunburns the next morning. What he found funny was that it was usually the new Cornerian army recruits fresh out of academy who suffered through it, and not civilian employees like himself. Not that such a presence had been on Titania that long, though. The base had been constructed five years ago after the end of the Anglar Blitz when Corneria recognized an advantage to having a base on Titania. Wolf had taken the repair job not long after when Star Wolf disbanded.

A fifteen minute walk and three flights of stairs brought him to his apartment. He swiped his keycard and was met with a cool rush of air when the door opened. He breathed a sigh of relief and peeled his sweaty muscle shirt off, and tossed it into the hamper by his bed. It may have been a very small studio apartment of basic quality, but at least it had air conditioning. That was mandated by Cornerian law—one of the few instances he found politics useful for anything. He gently laid himself down on the bed and took care not to agitate his injury. After he rest for a few moments, he turned and grabbed the remote on his bedside table to turn on the TV sitting on his dresser against the opposing wall to see what news in Corneria he'd missed during the day. He never cared much, but it allowed him to maintain some type of connection with the worlds outside of miserable, desolate Titania. A young female rabbit was anchoring this evening.

"President Pepper signed an executive order today that authorized an additional two billion credits toward Cornerian interstellar exploration and colonization. To date, Corneria has discovered 243 habitable exoplanets but has visited only seventy-four. Reactions were mixed but mostly positive, suggesting a renewed interest in Lylatian deep space exploration. General Peppy Hare of the Cornerian Army, who succeeded Pepper when he won the presidency five years ago, had this to say."

The TV cut to a clip of Peppy Hare in formal military attire speaking at a podium just outside of the Cornerian Army central headquarters building in Corneria City.

"I'm delighted by President Pepper's executive order and I can say with confidence that we're excited and honored to move forward with exploring new worlds and forging alliances with those that are inhabited. We've had minimal altercations with races we've encountered so far, and I'm proud of the work our valiant and skilled men and women in uniform have done to win Corneria the allies she has now."

Wolf smirked as he turned to lay on his side and pull a pillow under his head with his uninjured arm. All of this was merely feel-good fluff. The next Cornerian presidential election was only a year away and Wolf knew that Pepper was only making a big deal out of this and pushing exploration because it would win him points in the polls. And Peppy, devoted as ever to his old friend, was adding dollops of icing whenever he had the chance. Peppy was the textbook definition of a military general. He was proud, down-to-earth, direct, and, more recently, political. He was exactly what one would expect a high-ranking Cornerian military official to be, and Wolf just didn't understand what was so appealing about it.

He'd decided that he was through with the military lifestyle the second he completed his courses at the academy—he was too much of a free spirit, he figured, to sign his life away into something he viewed so robotic. Granted, that had led him to a lifetime of questionable choices and alliances, but at least he'd been in control of his destiny. He smirked again and shook his head, noting how ironic it was that he was now working as a mechanic to repair Cornerian military spacecraft.

He sighed, rolled onto his back, and decided that he needed a shower after such an agonizing day. That, and he wanted to wash away what oil he wasn't able to get with the shop towel after his fall. Before he did that, though, he pulled his phone out of his pocket to check his LyLink account. He never posted much on social media, but he admitted that he enjoyed seeing what other people he knew were up to. He scrolled through his feed, chuckling, rolling his eye at, and liking some posts. One particular post caught his attention, however—it belonged to Panther. He hadn't heard from Panther since Star Wolf disbanded after the Anglar Blitz. He hadn't kept up with Leon, either, and both of them had been completely silent on LyLink—until now, anyway.

The post was a picture of Panther in a booth at a bar in Corneria with a group of people. He was wearing a white collared button-down shirt and a pair of khakis, and wrapped around his waist was the arm of a blue vixen. He recognized her as Krystal from the now-disbanded Star Fox team. The caption on the picture read, "Night out with my beloved and friends. Having a great time!" He was floored—Panther and Krystal? He recalled that Panther had an affinity for her, but he never imagined that Krystal felt the same way. In fact, he was sure she'd been attracted to Fox McCloud—who also happened to be in the photo. Not only that, but it appeared that Panther had also befriended the Star Fox crew.

Wolf sat up and studied the other faces, and recognized a couple more—Falco Lombardi and Slippy Toad. There were two other females—a blue macaw who leaned her head on one of Falco's shoulders, and a pink toad whose shoulders Slippy had an arm around. Fox did not appear to have a date, and sat at the end of the booth with his tongue stuck out playfully. It was true that Star Fox had ceased to operate, but apparently the team members saw each other regularly.

"Fuck, I haven't even thought about these guys in…years," he spoke softly to himself.

He stared at the photo for a few more moments and reflected. They all looked so—happy. They'd apparently done quite well for themselves after the disbandment of Star Wolf and Star Fox. They were all dressed cleanly in what he considered to be expensive clothes, and while he had no idea what bar they were at, he figured out through the tasteful and modern décor in the background that it was by no means a place that the day-to-day laborer could afford. He tapped on Panther's profile picture, which took him to the cat's page. He scrolled down, noting that Panther had just recently started using LyLink again within the past couple of days, as the posts jumped from earlier that week to the pardoning ceremony five years prior. He then looked at Panther's _About_ page, and saw that he was now a Program Manager at TerraTech, a Cornerian terraformation company. He'd been there for a year, and had graduated from Corneria University with a degree in biotechnology about a year and a half ago. Panther had gone to university after he'd last seen him.

"Well…good for him, then, I guess," Wolf locked his phone and tossed it beside himself on the bed.

He could feel fatigue from the day taking over now, and reached up to rub his temples. He wanted to call it a night and go to sleep, but he knew he needed to get the grimy feeling out of his fur before he'd be comfortable. He sighed, stood up, and walked a few steps to the bathroom. The sensation of the bright LED lightbulbs made him wince his eye closed after being in the dark, the only light coming from the TV on his dresser. He reached into the shower and turned the water on, and went to remove oil-stained cargo pants—but his image in the mirror caused him to pause.

Staring back at him was a battered vulpine beginning to show his middle age. He looked tired. He looked defeated. A visible scar across his chest indicated a bloody altercation from the past. Another to the right of his abdomen served as a tribute to vengeance achieved by someone whom he'd double-crossed for pay. Finally, nearly-identical scars rose above and sank below his eyepatch—a constant reminder that he'd grown up under an abusive, drunken father. He used to have a bionic eye, but an accident during the Anglar Blitz had rendered it damaged beyond repair and his health insurance would not cover the replacement. So, back to the patch he'd gone. All of this introspection combined with the photo he'd just seen had caused certain feelings to stir within him—feelings he'd either ignore or suppress with alcohol. Regret, despair, and disappointment welled up and announced their presence via a quiver in his snout and a tear escaping his eye which left a wet trail in his fur. He regretted the choices he'd made that led him to this point. He felt hopeless for his future, and he was disgusted with the individual he'd become. Here he was, standing in a slapped-together apartment building on an underfunded military base receiving minimum wage pay on a planet that the star system considered useless.

Not only that, but now he was tearing up like a helpless pup.

He gripped the counter, stared fiercely at his reflection, and sharply scolded himself, "Damnit, O'Donnell! Suck it up, don't be a little bitch!" He didn't realize until after the words escaped his snout that he'd yelled.

His eye darted back and forth nervously for a brief moment, and then he shook his head, sniffed, wiped his eye, and stepped into the shower.


End file.
